How does France compare with other EU countries in terms of growth in labour productivity? Where does Japan rank versus the other major developed countries in public spending on health? People and politicians want to know how their countries and regions are performing. The OECD’s Factbook is designed to help them.

General government gross financial liabilities

As a percentage of GDP

Source: OECD

The OECD, an intergovernmental organisation grouping 30 developed countries, specializes in compiling comparative statistics to help policy-makers and citizens make informed choices and decisions.

Road fatalities

Per million vehicles and per million population, 2004

The Factbook presents a selection of these statistics using tables and charts accompanied by explanations and pointers to further reading.The 2006 edition includes more data from Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa in order to make the comparisons more meaningful at a global level. A key feature of the Factbook is the easy access that it provides to the underlying data.

Every chart and graph comes with an Internet link that delivers the data in Excel® format. The entire 2006 Factbook is available at www.SourceOECD.org/factbook and the same data, reorganised by country, is available at http://www.oecd.org/infobycountry. In some cases, the material provided online has a longer time-series than in the printed book.